She waited until the woman who had interrupted nodded. “Good. Then let’s open the discussion so we can move for a third vote. If the vote is again ‘no,’ we will not reconsider this person for membership again.”

Chapter Six
Jessa

Their small group went out to dinner at least once a month. Jessa prided herself on being practical and thought it was weird to hear grown-ups talk about having best friends, but hers was Faith Rabara. They’d met during freshman orientation at Georgetown almost twenty years ago, and their lives had circled around each other ever since.

Faith, from a big Filipino family that believed in frequent gatherings filled with laughter and unending plates of food. Jessa, raised in relative quiet by her dad in Ohio as he juggled extra shifts at the plant and nonstop requests by her maternal grandparents to see her as a way of staying connected to the daughter they lost when Jessa was born.

The third member of their little group joined in fourteen months ago. Tim Abner. Specifically, Timothy Aloysius Abner, grandson of a former congressman from Connecticut and Jessa’s live-in boyfriend. She wasn’t great at remembering dates or names, but she knew the exact date she met Tim because it was the day a one-night stand stretched into a weekend-long sex session and eventually a relationship. Jessa couldn’t figure out if that was romantic or not, so she pretended it was.

Tim was also an attorney, but almost everyone in DC seemed to be, so that wasn’t special. He practiced international business law, and a few sentences about his day were enough to put Jessa to sleep.

Tim arrived late to the bustling restaurant, as usual, taking off his suit jacket as he rounded the table and kissed Jessa. “What did I miss?”

Faith lowered her wineglass long enough to answer over the murmur of conversation in the open dining room. “The details of Jessa’s scary day in court.”

He slid into the chair next to Jessa. “I’m going to need something stronger than wine if we’re going to talk about couples fighting over lawn furniture or whatever it is this time.”

The waitress swung by then was off again, but she’d temporarily derailed the conversation, just as Jessa hoped. She’d be happy to talk about any subject except this one case.

Faith missed the silent woman-to-woman signal or something, because she chugged on. “You need to tell your law partners that—”

“I’m not going to make the jump from associate to partner if I whine.” There. Done. Ending the conversation there would make her evening less bumpy. The idea of engaging in endless rounds of arguments with Tim on this topic sounded exhausting. Jessa had had enough male wrangling for one day.

“He threatened to kill you,” Faith said, not letting the topic go.

“Wait.” Tim stopped in the middle of reaching for Jessa’s wineglass. “Rewind.”